Professor Ben Tonra:

What is Ireland's exposure? There is a generic and a specific aspect. On the generic, small states in the international system do not have a lot of power and, therefore, have to rely on the rule of law. Otherwise, they could be subject to the rule of force. There is a generic, principled interest in the defence of international treaties, international norms and international law. What we have seen with respect to Russia and Ukraine is a serious abuse of existing treaties and agreements and an ongoing failure on the part of the Russian Federation to respect agreements it solemnly signed going as far back as the end of the Cold War. That generic point is very germane and important.

On the specific, in respect of an accelerated conflict - there is ongoing conflict already - between Russia and Ukraine, there are multiple nightmare scenarios of death and destruction in Europe, divisions and fractures in the European Union, migration flows and military implications for Europe that threaten Ireland's basic interests entirely beyond looking at the economics of trade, gas flows, energy security and all the other things that flow from it. We are looking at something quite cataclysmic. I do not think people are exercising hyperbole when they talk about this as the biggest security threat Europe has faced since the Yugoslav wars.

The role of the Parliament and parliamentary committees such as this, and the key attribute they bring, is the capacity to listen and to inform. This committee genuinely has the capacity, for example, to talk to members in the Baltic states in particular and in central and eastern Europe, to get a sense of what their concerns and interests are and what they need us to do. I have had a couple of interactions with ambassadors over the past number of weeks who have asked me about Ireland's position. A couple of them have expressed genuine concern that they have not heard stronger statements coming from a senior level at Iveagh House about what has been going on. There have been generic expressions of concern, but there is a genuine question about why we are not hearing more, and more robustly, when Ireland is so invested in the kinds of security structures and agreements that Russia has been abusing. That parliamentary role of informing and listening to our partners is critical.

In respect of the specific question that was addressed, which goes right back to my own bailiwick, there is a paradox at the heart of this. The 27 member states tell us that they want a European Union that speaks strongly with one voice, but at one and the same time those member states will not give the European Union the institutions, capacity or responsibility to undertake that.

There is a very obvious reason for this, which is that the European Union is not a sovereign. It is not a state and there is no prospect on the immediate horizon of it becoming a federal state. Therefore, there is no political hierarchy. In the absence of a sovereign, there can be no European army. The European Union cannot act like Russia, China or the United States of America.

We have a phrase in political science, forgive me, but we talk about the reification of states, that is, talking about states as if they were people. We use phrases like "Germany feels" or "Russia wants" but that is not true; we know that it is governments and political leaders we are talking about. We do that at an even worse level with the European Union because we talk about it as if it is a country and as if it can do things on an executive level that it simply cannot do. It is a polity of 27 sovereign member states. Until those member states, individually and collectively, decide that they want the European Union to have the kind of capacity that they say they want it to have, it simply is not going to happen.

Is this as good as it gets? There is an obvious glass half full, glass half empty kind of argument to this. When I started looking at EU foreign policy co-operation back in the day, the sum total of that co-operation was quarterly meetings of foreign ministers. That was it. Four times a year foreign ministers sat down and they had a chat. When one compares that with where we are today, with the High Representative-Vice President, HRVP, the European external action service and all that comes with that, one can see that huge progress has been made. However, there is a question as to how much better this can get until member states make that profound decision as to whether they want the EU truly to be a sovereign-like actor in the international system. Without acceptance or agreement, that simply cannot happen, and, in the interim, we impose expectations on the EU that it simply cannot fulfil.

There is another issue about which I am concerned. We heard Josef Borrell, the HRVP, talking about the EU being able to speak the language of power. We also heard Ursula von der Leyen talk about the new European Commission being a geopolitical commission. There is a danger there because such talk accelerates and exacerbates this capabilities/expectations gap. The European Union cannot speak the language of power unless 27 sovereign member states let it and they will not do so.